With Divorces Rampant, Will Arranged Marriages Come Back?
The entertainment industry has perhaps done its job too well in getting young people to fall in love after the briefest encounters and most tenuous sentiments. It is supposed to be a magical time based upon emotional surrender that owes nothing to logic and durability.
Shakespeare may have started it all with Romeo and Juliet, but movies and songs celebrate love at first sight as if it is the ultimate freedom, a bona fide human right that brooks no challenge. But young people who hook up then shack up can drift for years into and out of shallow relationships. Marriages fall apart far too frequently, and families are increasingly dysfunctional.
Typical of the one-sided way that politically incorrect positions are treated today, arranged marriages are only mentioned by media detractors unfavorably, perhaps in third world settings where lecherous rich men prey upon sweet young things.
Even so, Western culture actually took its strength from such marriages. The aristocracy was based upon it. You married into families for political and economic advantage. Romantic love grew over the course of a marriage (as it should) and religious and ethnic bonds were secured without question. All the better for long-term harmony. Need we mention Downton Abbey?
Online dating services are a recent attempt to match up couples more logically. And many well-off liberal parents know that sending their kids to ivy-league colleges will make sure that the pool of potential spouses will be focused into others like them. Living in upscale neighborhoods does the same thing.
One observer of modern Japan, Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, finds that her native country’s substantial cultural strengths come not just from the ethnic seclusion that marked Japan’s past, but from the long tradition of parental involvement in helping their children choose the right mates:
In modern Japan, so-called arranged marriage usually starts with the mother looking for a suitable marriage partner for her daughter or son. The first stage is a “paper screening,” the exchange between the prospects of documents containing the relevant information–where their parents came from, information about the rest of the family, and their life history, including education, details of employment (the positions held, the name of the company), and hobbies or special interests–together with a photograph. The parents of each party inspect the prospect’s background, at times traveling to the other family’s place of origin to make sure the family has no skeleton in the closet.
What she describes is almost a hallmark of civilization from any period, with parents and other relatives all teaming up to make the choices strongest. In one such family, they “were all Christians, which meant that they had a common set of values.They were from the same social circle, although they may not have known each other in person. Many Christians in Japan belong to a particular segment of the upper class that places emphasis on education and high culture, both European and Japanese.”
The author adds how-to details that go well beyond simple economic arrangements. Puppy love is out, but these well-founded relationships actually do prosper well, with married couples learning to be in love over time:
After the prospects pass the preliminary screening, the two young people meet, accompanied by both sets of parents. If they both like what they see, then “dating,” a period of courtship in which the young people get to know each another, begins. At any time, either party can say no without any negative repercussions, at least until one refuses too many prospective spouses. If all goes well, the couple agrees to marry…one or both may fall in love.
